Create your own DSLR external battery pack

Anyone shooting HD video on a DSLR knows how quickly the battery can drain. You can get AC power adapters for some cameras, but where there’s video, there’s not always an outlet.

In this tutorial (see above video), camera hacker Chris Winter shows you how to make an external battery pack system with about nine times the runtime using a $40 battery pack, DC coupler, hot-shoe plate and some Velcro.

If you don’t want to watch the whole video you can figure out the setup by visiting Winter’s blog where he lists all the necessary parts (with links to purchase) for the Canon EOS 5D, 7D, 70D or the T4i, T3i and T2i.

MAKE SURE you don't accidentally bump it up to 20v. I fried my first G7 by not verifying it was set properly after a power glitch. That will not happen again! I'm working on putting a limiter on it for the DC plug port.

I figured it can run the camera about 20 hours+ if taking 1080 60p video. Not sure about 4K yet

Chris. Thank you for the article on the external battery pack. I am a city planner and we do a lot of field recordings of project sites and also pedestrian interviews. This is exactly what we need (and hence we ordered the materials) to help us with long field recording sessions.

I went to your web page and I like your inquisitive nature and they way you are trying to solve problems and innovate. Keep it up! This board is notoriously grumpy so take their feedback with a grain of salt.

In the early 1960s, I created a power supply for my electronic flash from 8 C size batteries. I don't remember the voltage output nor details except that I was able to get a 500 shoots per set of 8 C batteries. At that time, the most I could get from a fully charge built-in NiCd was about 50 shoots. I had a leather case slung over my shoulder and a patch cord connecting the battery pack to the flash mounted n the camera. that was sufficient for any of the weddings and reception I covered at that time.

I have the same, exact Anker battery I bought a year and a half ago mainly to recharge my smart phone when I'm away from AC. The battery is nicely made and gives me about 6 (near dead to full) recharges on my phone! It also holds a charge well for long periods of time.

My Oly E-M1 uses a BLN-1 battery rated at 7.6-Volt and 1220 mAh. Has anyone tried building one of these for an E-M5/1?

Nothing against the Chirs, but why is this worthy of posting on DPReview? It's using a DC Coupler for what a DC Coupler is designed for. Where's the news here?All Chris did was mount the battery in a very inconvenient location. I can see my head hitting the battery or the cable. Not to mention, losing the ability to attach a flash or even the ability to use the built-in flash.

Actually, I was glad to see the article about the battery and hope that DP Review keeps a diversity of articles coming. A narrow focus makes for a boring web site. Thanks DP- I for one appreciate the work you do !

I second that. Quick clean solutions are always welcome, particularly with purchase links for the odds and ends. When I have all my gear bought for a while I tend to not watch the headline as carefully. All in all they do a good job.

I am hoping to build or find such a solution for the 430EX II that does not have a external plug. If anyone knows of a proven solution, feel free to PM me.

i'm glad this was posted, although i saw this on diyphotography last week. this setup definitely becomes useful when you're doing hours long timelapses. can't use this with my nikon, but great for those that can.

If anyone follows the links for still use (because video is not available on the classic) on a Canon 5D, be aware it doesn't use the battery type linked under the title 5D. That battery pack is for 5D Mark II and Mark III. The 5D uses a different battery pack.

Most modern cameras charge over USB (mirrorless anyway, maybe SLRs don't, but haven't looked at one in a couple years).

With my Samsung NX30, it can charge over USB at the same time you are shooting so I just run a right angle USB cable from the grip down to a battery pack in my pocket and can get whatever battery life I want. Not all will charge over USB and be able to shoot at the same time, I know none of the Sony's allow that. Not sure about Panasonic or Olympus.

1) This was very informative. I thought about building a power supply with a lead battery and a DC-DC converter but - despite it will supply a 600D for 30 hours it is heavy.Have not known that these battery packs come now with a 9V (and 12V) supply plug.

2) external power supply for the 40D is rated @ 8.4 volts. I would try to reduce the voltage to 8.3 volts with a DC-DC converter - I am not shure that the dummy battery has some regulator. Applying 12V will perhaps destroy the camera, a DC-DC regulator is a good "protective circuit".

Lol, lead acid? Might want to google LithiumIon. you can build packs with 18650 cells that store 3amp/hr per cell @4.2v when full. I think a pack with 4 cells series+parallell would yield hilariously long runtime with very little weight or bulk.

Just as an example the above pack would be equivalent to 8 of my D7100 batteries.

Attaching the battery to the hotshoe seems a bad idea to me. The battery is big and heavy. Why not use a longer cable and carry the battery on a pocket or use a belt clip?

In the past I've built a battery pack to use with my old D50. Bought a plastic case, 7 AA rechargeable batteries, made the dummy battery myself and used a "curly" type cord from an unused car cellphone charger to connect the battery pack to the dummy battery. It looked and worked great. I didn't use it much though, because the standard D50 battery lasts many shots if you don't use the remote control or flash.

Hey mate, Absolutely yep you could do that. Infact I do that sometimes. The reason why I have it mounted on the camera is simply because when you the camera on and off the tripod constantly, being attached to you belt clip becomes a bit slow!Thanks for watching, CheersChris

Go ahead n mount it the same way as demonstrated and your hotshoe will be bent and broken in less than a day of use. anyone should be able to see the physical strain that such imbalance on a small support creates.

Hey mate, I've been using it constantly for over 4 months now and haven't had any problems with my hot shoe mount. The way that it's set up with the cheese plate, means that it is evenly distributing the weight of the battery (which is also incredibly light). No heavier than adding a flash or video light! Cheers for watching!Chris Winter

" anyone should be able to see the physical strain that such imbalance on a small support creates."

That battery pack is a fair bit lighter than a professional flashgun through (300g vs 500g for an SB-910), so you're putting less strain on the shoe than if you were using a flashgun in portrait mode, and I haven't heard of any cases of that breaking the shoe.

@ Andy - of course, but none of them have such a lopsided balance. The part you incline forward on a flash weighs nothing compared to the battery compartments/main housing and the extended part is a lot shorter, thereby balancing themselves quite nicely.

This example on the other hand, carries the majority of its weight on the extended part. People will do what they want but you won't find that setup wobbling up and down on my cameras.

First with the velcro you can adjust the balance if that is of your concern. Second Andy Crowe mentioned the portrait mode. Here the forces on the hot shoe with a big flash like the SB-910 and 4 batteries included are not balanced at all and much higher than this battery pack here in either portrait or landscape mode.

I already use a large external battery pack for some time on my two GH2's for 3D. It also improves the sync in such a situation. You need two fake Panasonic batteries with external plugs to do that. These are not easy to find and buy.

Actually, they are a dime a dozen ... I have a couple I bought on eBay and they came with the power supply too. I sold the G5 and GH2 and kept these as the power supply works for all Panasonic cameras. The new G6 uses one of them complete and the GM1 can use the other when I get the fake battery, which is now available. What I don't have is the extended battery and there are many such excellent batteries out there now with 9V out ...

It doesn't fit the newer cameras but a new version of the Digipower-9000 would be great. I use one to power all my vintage digitals-remember the ones that would eat 4AA batteries of any kind in short time. We see hundreds of new camera accessories and nothing like that.

People who actually shoot for work have been making way more mods to their gear than this. For them, getting something to work for the job is more important than warranty. They're no idiots, just being practical.

Unless knowing how the power supply circuit inside the camera is designed, it does seems like a pretty bad idea to connect 9V to it. The nominal voltage of the battery is only 7.2V. It might well overheat the camera, which is already hot when shooting video.

Hey mate, It should be ok as the Dummy battery down converts the voltage to 7.2v. I've been using it for a few months now with no problems and it's still running fantastic. I wouldn't be putting 12v through it (even though i've tested that), but the 9v seems to be perfect. CheersChris Winter

The dummy battery connector he's using apparently has an active circuit inside and is designed for 7.4V-8.4V input, in which case 9V output from the battery is probably ok. Of course, that's based on sketchy Amazon specs which also say "4V-8.4V" without specifying for what. I don't put too much faith in those specs....

The real voltages are probably higher unless under heavy load, and there are probably regulators inside the camera that make that ok anyway. Those regulators might run hot, but having the battery outside the camera removes a major heat source.

In sum, probably ok, but I don't think I'd risk it with a $1000 camera unless I was truly desperate... even then I'd test it before trusting it.

I think, at this voltage level and Ah power, there is no risk for the camera.

I use successfully a Li-Ion battery for a old JOBO GIGA-X HD to have the power for a SIGMA SD9 that is running with 4 AA akku or 4 AA alcaline cells with a very , very short time of use ( 20 - 40 shots.....)

With this akku I can shot more than 400 images.

The nominal voltage is 5 V and the power is 4 Ah.

Also I use it successfully with Sigma SD 14 -15 and PENTAX K10 ( 7,4 V ) with no problems......

It's not actually too bad mario, it's not perfect but still usable. It doesn't block the controls which is good and if you are shooting stills, you can easily twist the battery and cheese plate sideways to make it not bump into your head! CheersChris Winter

Fair enough for the handling, that would depend on the camera and personal preference anyway. But the voltage switch pushing things outside specs is not very convincing, if I really had to use this setup I'd make a couple of rounds of duct tape on it to be safe...

Thanks mate, actually the cable is pretty snug in there. Of course it'd be better with an xlr connection, but for $40 it's pretty good! You could get a right angle cable to make it even better and more secure too!CheersChris Winter

The camera would then run on its internal battery. When you get the low battery warning you would notice it its unplugged. You could plug it back in and either pay attention to it, or wait for the next warning to plug it back in.

If it actually draws 9V, 5500mah, or about 3 LP-E6. If it draws the same current as the normal battery, 7.2V then 6900mah or about 3.8 batteries.

For reference, a fully charged LP-E6 can do about 120 minutes of continuous video shooting or about 1x32gb SD card on a Canon 6D. So this thing would allow for at least 360 minutes or 6 hours of video.

As Richard said, it is cheaper (nearly half the price of 1 LP-E6 battery), it allows for much longer run times. It's also nearly hot swappable so you could easily have one in your pocket and quickly change it over without having to open up the battery door.

The last time I did significant video, I had three CF cards and three batteries that got rotated together. We did have a handy AC outlet for charging the batteries. If we didn't, we still could have charged them using an inverter connected to a car's cigarette lighter.

CF capacity was 32 GB. We rarely got close to filling them up. We generally ran out of battery first - this using a 5D Mark II.

I can see this being useful if the shoot involves long clips. If, like in our situation, you're shooting mostly relatively short clips, rotating batteries and cards works just fine.

We actually rotated more frequently than we needed to, because this was part of a 48 Hours Film project, so we wanted to get files to the editor ASAP. I suppose we should have aded Card and Battery Runner to the credits. :)

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